Japanese are aghast at how pathetic their nation’s robotic poster-child ASIMO is compared to America’s new bipedal military prototype PETMAN.

For those not yet familiar with PETMAN, Boston Dynamics’ famed bipedal testbot, the video below shows how far science can progress if only a nation has the foresight to run the world’s largest weapons development programme:

The video caused quite a stir the world over, and in Japan a variety of unfavourable comparisons to Honda’s apparently pointless eternal prototype android Asimo were made, although the fact most of the videos were 10 years old spared it too much criticism.

“This thing makes Asimo look like a toy.”

“Compare to Asimo. This is real bipedal locomotion. Over 5 times faster, capable of running. In ten years it will be complete. The country they send this machine into will be doomed.”

“It still has wires on it!”

“Those are just to prevent damage if it falls over in a test?”

“It can do push-ups! It’s hardening its body!”

“It is a lot less creepy than I thought it would be.”

“Asimo is just a bunch of programmed tricks for entertainment. The possibilities of something like this, based on actual reflexes, are so much greater.”

“Japan is only developing them for industrial or welfare use. This is clearly military. And their government is clearly pouring huge amounts of money into it, so it’s no surprise development proceeded so quickly.”

“I thought they stopped working on Asimo in 2007 in any case.”

“Machines built for war really exude bloodlust don’t they?”

“I’m a little sad that Japan has been so badly beaten in a field it is supposedly dominant.”

“Meanwhile, Japan is busily making fembots.”

“In 10 years these will be maidbots and osanajimibots. You’ve won!”

There is probably something to the realisation that human expenditure on sex dwarfs expenditure on military activity (and, indeed, just about everything else), and that most men could probably be persuaded to take out a mortgage several times that on their house in order to own a robotic sex slave.

However, with impeccably poor timing, Honda has decided to unveil a demo of the latest version of Asimo – perhaps in a futile effort to upstage PETMAN:

This is apparently the first publicised update in 4 years, so the timing is certainly suspicious.

In an effort to produce something useful, Honda has also been flaunting a boring robotic arm it says it developed for use cleaning up the nation’s stricken reactors (embarrassingly, Japan had no robots capable of such work and at one point ended up using American packbots).

However, given that Tepco has been able to freely and cheaply sub-sub-sub-contract the poor and destitute to work amidst the radioactive remains of the prefecture it ruined by the simple expedient of sacking them after a day’s rad exposure, it seems this may be a hard sell.

Unfortunately for Honda, few discussions of Asimo manage to get far without the embarrassing Asimo tumble video being trotted out:

Compare to the famous videos of Boston Dynamics’ military robo-packdog BigDog smugly prancing around in the mud and being mercilessly kicked, abuse it is hard to imagine Asimo surviving intact:

Even Asimo’s latest iteration is proving embarrassing to the Japanese, supposedly the world-leaders in robotics:

“Maybe now it can manage a flight of stairs.”

“It’s good, but if they don’t actually work out a way of selling this they are going to be overtake.”

“Stop messing around and make a useful robot already!”

“It can probably play DDR, but without mobility and judgement it’s useless.”

“After the quake, the illusion that Japan is some kind of robot heaven was totally shattered.”

“What ever happened to Aibo?”

“It’s a waste of time if they can’t put this to military use. Just a hobby, not something a corporation should wasting its time on. They should hurry up and sell it to the Yanks whilst it’s still worth something.”

“I feel sorry for the person inside.”

“They’ve been blown away by Boston Dynamics so now they are trying to save face by loading it with junk features like sign language, aren’t they?”

“Are you PETMAN lovers trolling? The technology is on totally different levels, Asimo’s is 20 years old.”

“It would be perfect if they could actually load an AI onto it.”

“Hurry up with the sex robot.”

“These two robots have totally different development objectives.

People say Asimo is nothing like a human, but it’s actually really close. Its way of walking is said to be close to how a person walks when they are trying to avoid spilling an unsteady cup of water.

If you were serving a table, pushing a wagon or leading a child or old person by the hand, that’s how you’d need to make a robot walk.

PETMAN isn’t designed with that in mind at all at the moment. Its designed to make fast and forceful progress through the rough outdoors.

That’s why it’s meaningless to compare the two.”

“Honestly, I think Honda has got carried away with the romance of the thing.”

“So America makes military robots. Japan’s making them for… why? Communication? Nursing? To be friends? I’m not sure if this is more like Honda or Japan.”

For military or security purposes, use a weighted and shielded **3** legged bot (biped bots are a failure, the gyro/balance mechanics make it too complicated and useless for now so forget it) with a trigger finger and a semi automatic gun (and cam for aim).

Then 3 buttons on the remote, 1) auto targeting mode (shoot everything of a certain size that moves and that does not give a signal - friendlies need to have an emitter) 2) sentry mode (shoot only if it moves) 3) manual for focus fire.

Weighted so that when it is hit, it won't go flying off. It could also be electrocutive so that thieves on the battlefield will have some trouble carting off the contraption.

Could have a robotic arm with fingers etc. as well.

This can be manufactured ANYTIME without any 'compulsory' advancements that don't exist. Whats with the cables and stuff? The only issue is jamming or hacking of signals perhaps via variable frequency reception etc..

well for what reason do we need a military robot anyway? i don't like wars out of my ps3, i preffer the sex doll bot slave :D and asimo can look silly but he is very funtional if you think the other one need wires to stand up in certain moves.

Tbh, fembots aren't something not to be taken seriously. Imagine some day in the far future, a dude is banging his newly arrived fembot and suddenly she opens her mouth, shoots off a torpedo from inside and blasted the guy into pieces of burnt meat right after saying "I was sent by someone you know in the past to assassinate you into oblivion".

Not really. Asimo in its current form cannot be sold to actually help people... in it's current state its just a publicity tool, honda invests in these a lot, but they probably spent the most on Asimo.
Asimo slowly climbing stair and hoping it doesn't fall down, slowly opening a jar or kicking a ball... helps people how exactly.

Yeah I dont think amiso is commercial quite yet... and I dont think any real functioning sex andriod are available for commercial use either... all those are still in prototype stage where they are good enough to show off a few things for media but thats about it.

The closest one that is most adaptable at this very moment for commercial use is that dog that carry people luggage LOL, could be useful for people that go hiking or camping and it can have no problem keeping up and carry luggage/tent/etc.

The US also does a lot of commercial sector stuff such as heavy equipment,trucks,excavators,aircraft,spacecraft etc.

Japanese biped robot market usually health care or entertainment while the US testing in the case of PITMAN,military bigdog, or doing hazardous work.

A commercial robot developed in the US likely would be more setup for high risk construction work or inspecting a reactor while in Japan they wish to make one that can work in a nursing home.
In the US we have immigrants for nursing work.

I expect in the future there might even end up being robots that are teleoperated by people in the third world as it would be a low cost way to add human intelligence.

Sounds mean but it's true. The third world is the third world for a good reason. Most of the people there are far below the average IQ.
The average African IQ is about 67-70. I doubt we need them to teleoperate robots do to stuff in Europe or America.
Unless it's about selling drugs, rape or other crimes.

How exactly would your third world scientist in his makeshift shack with antiquated equipment compete with the many high tech biopharmaceutical and genetic research labs in the first world, genius? Magic fairy dust?

Look up 'RealDoll' then consider insertion of servos into the near 6K expensive doll's joints for non-tongue based bj sex (this will be the most difficult to simulate (can imagine people buying lubricant to 'refill' saliva simulators. Simulating speech and selection of voice actresses are also the hardest thing to manufacture.

Could India (bravo on the Tata nano) or China look at these and try to make a 600.00 version of a static Realdoll at least? I think this is SERIOUSLY overpriced because wrapping and sealing of few cubic feet silicone around a light steel frame and a glue on of faux hair should not cost that much. In time a 6K version of the above android could be China's best product, barring the real thing.